Author's infos

Introduction:

Flight of the Phoenix

Béla shielded her eyes against the incredible brightness in the viewscreen as a tiny sun rose up out of the earth far below. She squinted and watched the shadow of a tall pillar of cloud stretch across the land. Another bright pinprick of nuclear energy occurred seemingly right next to the first one – then another, and yet, another, each blast creating an unsurpassable barrier to the approaching Confederate army.

‘How are you doing, Baby,’ Béla called out to her daughter. ‘Are you holding up all right?’

‘Fine, Mom,’ Lisa, a hundred miles below, replied.

Lisa’s wings were extended fully and although she was several miles up and above the nuclear explosions she was creating, she reveled in the heat and the massive energy of each blast that seared her seemingly fragile body as the air boiled and churned around her. The amount of damage she’d done below wasn’t readily visible because of the massive, roiling, debris clouds.

She banked and soared toward the next section they’d mapped out and moments later, another searing blast of pure energy rose up from the ground to cook her again. When she was finished with this little chore, a trench the size of the Grand Canyon would separate the nasties and Solar City. It would take their army weeks to go around it.

She felt excitement dance through her body, giving her goosebumps. She felt so free, not having to constantly battle that seething, angry mass of energy in her mind anymore. She could pull energy from the blasts she was creating far below to protect her body even as the heat and the pressure from each blast did its best to vaporize her.

She radiated a great burst of love at Macario for suggesting that she could just cast all that hateful energy out of her mind the same way she’d absorbed it so many years ago on that terrible day when she’d destroyed an entire city.

She had exuberantly shoved it all out into the sky, even using some of her own personal mass to make sure she expelled it all. The skyburst had nearly killed them both, but she’d managed to teleport Macario and herself to safety before she collapsed, completely drained of energy for the first time in her young life.

When she’d awakened from her two-day coma, she found that she could create energy anytime she needed it by simply teleporting a few grains of whatever she was looking at into any solid object or surface.

Presto and Boom! Instant nuclear power! With the added advantage that – it wasn’t continually exploding inside her head!

Soaring high over the ground to the northeast of the intruding army, she mentally sought for scouts who might be checking the terrain for troop advancement toward her home in the mountains. There were several. She teleported them out of the area she wanted to blow, then picked up a piece of sandstone with her mind and teleported it into the rocks below the surface, closing her eyes against the blinding brightness that resulted from her action.

Sixteen more sandstone rocks and sixteen nuclear blasts later, the flatlands preceding the magnificent Rocky Mountains ended abruptly with an impressive, impassable mile-wide, mile-deep canyon that arched around from Angel Fire to the Spanish Peaks.

Satisfied with the job she did, Lisa teleported up to the ship.

“Nobody’s going to get past that,” Lisa smirked, viewing the damage from the new viewscreens on the orbiting ship.

“They should be at the canyon mouth in another day,” Tabatha said, looking at the viewscreen again.

“Tomorrow night, then,” Lisa chirped, then vanished.

‘We’ll give them a fireworks display they won’t soon forget!’

Mac was home, for a change. Lisa popped in right next to him.

“Boo!” she said, then laughed as he jumped. “Hi, lover! I’m home…”

They kissed for a few seconds.

“You act like you have been having a ball all day,” Macario said, hugging her tightly.

“Who, me?” Lisa asked, her voice strained by her strong arms around her ribs. “Yeah, I have!”

Mac set her down. “Naked, as usual, I see.”

“I can’t fly with clothes on,” Lisa explained.

“I felt the quakes,” Mac said, changing the subject. “How did it go? Did you have any problems now that you…”

“Nope!” Lisa interrupted. “If anything, handling power is easier now! I don’t have to concern myself with letting too much out at one time. I never really knew how much concentration it took to hold all that inside me.”

“Can you still flame?” he asked.

Lisa’s shoulders slumped just a little. “No, and I don’t have my energy shield anymore, either. I can create a shield by grabbing energy if there is any nearby, but mostly I’ll have to rely on mental agility and teleportation from now on. That’s one thing I miss. I could out-power anybody. Now, I’m no stronger than any of the others.”

She sat down at the table and started to pick at a stale chunk of bread and sighed, “I’m human, now – just another typical vampire girl – just like Mom.”

Mac saw a gleam in her eye and realized that his darling Lisa was hiding something. They had both agreed not to disclose the fact that she wasn’t a phoenix anymore, but Lisa was hiding something else.

“Okay, Babe,” Macario said, dropping to his knees and leaning his elbows into her bare thighs. “What is it you’re so smirky about?”

“Huh?” Lisa asked, pretending complete innocence.

Mac dug his fingers into her soft tummy as she sat there. “Tell me!”

“There’s nothing to say,” she yelped, as she kicked him in the chest and fell backwards to the floor.

“You have a secret!” Mac exclaimed as he pulled the chair out from between them where it had fallen.

He slid across the floor and grabbed Lisa’s long, slender legs as she tried to scramble up and out of his way, yelling in playful exuberance.

She hit the wall hard, and Mac mashed into her a second later, unable to stop his mad rush toward her. Lisa broadcast her joy at the brutal impact, confusing Mac completely.

She turned around in his embrace. Her face and shoulder were bruised from the impact. She was laughing, glad about something she wouldn’t tell him.

“Tell me, damn you!” Macario demanded, unable to resist her infectious joy and laughing even as he tried to be masculine and controlling.

“You can’t see?” she chortled. “Look at me!”

Lisa wrapped her arms around Mac’s neck and hugged him tightly, opening her mind to him as well. The dark clouds of angry energy were completely gone – her mind felt light and carefree – and spacious. Her mind contained a lot of free, clean space where before, there had been sullen darkness.

“I would hesitate to call you an airhead,” Mac chuckled as he held her. “But I still don’t understand. I can see the change. But I can’t see what changed. Did your constant war with yourself take up that much room?”

“That thing in my head?” Lisa asked, raising an eyebrow at his description of what he thought was wrong with her. “Yeah, it did – it took up a lot of space. ‘Constant war with myself,’ huh?”

“Well,” Mac admitted, “I don’t know what else to call it. You were doing it to yourself – like some kind of burden you had to carry, and you couldn’t put it down – but all you had to do was stop doing that.”

“Thanks for your unwanted opinion,” Lisa said, her mood more temperate, now. “It was important and concerned the lives of millions of people. The fact that I could get rid of it never occurred to me. And if I’d stopped ‘doing that’ all the times I wanted to, I’d have blown up, along with whatever city I was in at the time.”

“Well, you didn’t blow up any cities,” Mac said soothingly, “and it’s gone, all the same.”

“Yes,” Lisa murmured, forgiving him for upsetting her and embracing him again. “It’s gone.”

“So,” Mac said, breaking their kiss with that ever-so-hated word, “What’ll happen the next time you need to flare to save your butt?”

Lisa sighed, realizing that Mac was going to keep her feet on the ground, no matter how badly her mind wanted to soar with elation. “It’d better not happen. You might miss me.”

“We should tell Mama Bee you can’t ‘phoenix’ anymore,” he said.

“I’m the one who watches their backs,” Lisa murmured. “They’re more likely to screw up if they think I can’t protect them.”

“But you can’t protect them as well, now, can you?” Macario asked.

“I can still time-walk,” she replied. “Any trouble they can get into, I can go back and fix it. Beside, I can still create nuclear energy – as much as I need, when I need it. And I can shield myself if I have enough warning. I tested if I could do that while I was out there earlier.”

“Yeah,” Macario said, “but…”

‘Enough talk!’ Lisa exclaimed in Mac’s mind as she stretched up and bit his earlobe.

Mac pressed his lips against the side of her head and began working his way down to her neck. In the meantime, Lisa was nibbling on his shoulder bone and pressing her hardening nipples against his chest right through his shirt.

Mac was working on her neck, furiously sucking on her soft, warm flesh, trying to make a blood-mark that would stay without breaking her skin. The hickeys were healing almost as fast as he made them.

Every square inch of Lisa’s skin was tingling with her delight as she licked, kissed and nipped her beloved Macario with sensual abandon. Mac was having a hard time keeping up with her. Almost before he was ready, Lisa was guiding him into her warm, wet center of lust. Her pussy quivered as he began moving back and forth. She was already coming and he was just starting.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and continued to kiss and nip his chest and shoulders. Then she surrounded one of his nipples with her lips and began to suck. Mac could hear the strange sounds she was making. It sounded as though she was chortling, deep in her throat.

After a few seconds, Mac was sure his nipple was leaking fluids – she was sucking on it that hard – and he pulled her head back with his fist in her hair. Her face radiated pure joy as she looked up at him, then she completely surrounded them both with her radiated lust, showing him how erotically excited the scorching heat from those nuclear clouds had made her feel. Mac suddenly felt so weak he nearly dropped her.

Carrying her out of the kitchen and into the bedroom while she was wrapped around him and impaled on his cock was harder work than he’d remembered. Lisa was like a succubus. She owned both her body and his, and she was draining them both for her sexual pleasure. Mac moaned weakly as he sank down and deposited his wanton cock-sheath on the bed, rump first. Then he collapsed down on top of her, driving her into the mattress with all his weight.

Lisa grunted at the impact as he drove the air right out of her lungs. Mac knew she hated that and that their mad lovemaking was probably over just as soon as she could worm her way out from beneath him. He knew she’d never believe that, this time, anyway, it was completely accidental and wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t felt so weak, and he needed to finish now, before she wormed her way out from under him.

After a moment, Mac realized that Lisa’s undulating body wasn’t trying to escape. Instead, she was humping her half-crushed pelvis against his as hard as she could, constantly moaning and making that strange laughing sound.

Suddenly, Mac could feel inside her body as she mind-linked with him again, letting him know she was very close to having an orgasm. Mac lifted some of his body weight off her and began fucking her again. Lisa almost immediately radiated her lustful sensations through his body as she came. Mac could feel his cock tingling in response, wanting the same sensations she was broadcasting.

Mac continued fucking her as hard as he could, and she kept coming as hard as she could. He could tell she was completely out of control and that she loved the way he was spiraling her sensations upward toward total oblivion. As many times as the two of them had made love over the years, he’d never seen Lisa like this. This was Lisa – fucking like a girl – not demanding, not controlling – just writhing on his cock and coming, again and again and again, letting him make her feel…

He suddenly realized that she wasn’t just fucking him; she was making mad, passionate love to him. The idea struck him like an erotic thunderbolt that went straight to his cock. For the first time, ever, she was completely open to whatever he would do with her. By giving him complete power over her, she was reaching new heights of ecstasy that she’d never realized, before. When she felt him come inside her, her orgasm was so powerful that she passed out completely.

Mac felt his cock explode inside her as she arched her back to receive him. With an exhausted groan, he collapsed down on both her and the mattress – still conscious enough to make certain that most of his weight was on the mattress and not on her. He lay, gasping, on the bed with her arm trapped under his head and her legs still wrapped around his hips.

Gradually, they slipped apart and Lisa lay sprawled on the bed with one leg still trapped under his hips. Her other leg was the mirror image, except with no male carcass on it. Her exposed pussy glistened from cum, both his and hers, quietly leaking out and down the crack of her ass.

After a few moments, Macario heard a weak moan and Lisa stirred slightly. Realizing he was still half-laying on her, he scooted back and off her limbs. Lisa moaned again and rolled over, laying one arm and one leg across his body.

“Oh, God…” she whispered. “I came…”

“Yeah, you did,” Mac whispered back, pleased that she was actually sated without him having to mutilate her.

She forced herself to wake up more. She needed to tell him… Mac could feel her anxiety even as he realized that she was actually sexually satisfied.

“Not like that,” she replied, more conscious now. “I could never let go before. I always had to keep control. This time… I let go. It was… wonderful.”

“You mean you didn’t orgasm before?” he asked, not understanding.

Lisa sighed, knowing that she should’ve just kept quiet. “Yes, of course I’ve orgasmed before. We’ve mind-linked often enough that you know I have. I just never completely let go when I had one, that’s all.”

“Why not?” he asked.

Lisa sighed in frustration (not sexual). Then she bit him.

~~~~~

It was the next day and Lisa was back on the Phoenix III, orbiting high above the mountains, with Tabatha and Amber, the bridge officer.

“The army is within about twelve kilometers of where you want to blast,” Amber informed the girls. “They should get a really good show.”

“Okay, let’s do it,” Tabatha said.

Lisa vanished from the bridge and both the remaining girls watched the viewscreen. Within a minute, a bright, tiny dot of pure nuclear energy appeared far below, then was covered over by the expanding gas cloud. As the minutes went by, another appeared near the first, then another. Soon thick white towers rising high into the air blocked the entire pass between the two mountain ranges.

Lisa reappeared on the bridge. “Well, that should take care of any military threat.”

To the commander, she said, “Mac told me you wanted me and Tabby, here, to try to make a battery for your engine?”

“Yes,” Amber said, “Every time the electro-magnetic drive is activated, it depletes the stored charges in conventional batteries. The expanding magnetic field simply sucks them dry, almost instantly. Macario was telling me that you two could possibly make something that wouldn’t discharge the instant an electro-magnetic pulse hit it.”

“It’s possible, I imagine,” Tabatha said, thinking about her new shield – the one she got from that Harrah. “I could surround some of Lisa’s mind power with a shield and maybe…”

“I think perhaps I can make an external power source that the Praetor could control,” Lisa interrupted, “and then you could shield it from the ship’s drive.”

“That’d be cool,” Amber replied. “Let’s do it.”

‘Ember – I’m sending them to you…’ Amber thought to her twin sister at the other end of the ship.

Lisa and Tabatha teleported back to Engineering. It was a half-mile swim in free-fall, otherwise.

“We should try one outside the ship, first,” Ember, the Engineering Officer, told them, “especially if we’re working with nuclear energy.”

“It’s not radioactive,” Lisa assured her. “Shouldn’t be that much of a problem.”

“What if the shield doesn’t hold?” Ember replied and sent Lisa an image of her precious rosin ship gutted by a nuclear blast.

Tabatha almost laughed watching Lisa frown and smile at the same time.

“Let’s test the shield first,” Lisa said, remembering her only encounter with it when she’d tried to eradicate the mutant spiders.

“Okay,” Tabatha replied. Closing her eyes, she created a round sphere of energy outside the hull. “You see that?”

“Yeah,” Lisa replied. “I see it.”

Concentrating harder than normal, she teleported inside it.

‘Well, I can get in and out of it, anyway,’ she thought back at Tabatha and Ember. ‘Let’s try putting some energy in here.’

‘I’ll have to fake this part,’ she realized, shielding her mind from the others.

Dreamwalking earthward, she found a rock and teleported it into the sphere where her body was. Realizing she needed two, she teleported a second one up as well. Teleporting outside into naked space, Lisa looked into the sphere. Grasping one rock into her mind, she teleported it into the other. The sphere turned blinding white like a tiny sun, but the shield held, releasing only a fraction of the heat being created inside. Lisa grinned with pleasure as the intense heat from it warmed her freezing body.

‘At least, my hair isn’t freezing wet this time…’ she thought to herself, remembering her first, almost virginal attempt to exist in the vacuum of space.

‘Can you feel that?’ Lisa asked, mentally calling out to Tabatha.

‘Wow! That’s incredible!’ Tabatha replied, completely awestruck. ‘I about had an orgasm when you did that! How can you have that much power inside your head and not go insane?’

“How can you use that to power the ship’s drive?” Tabatha wanted to know.

“Shouldn’t you be concentrating on holding that shield?” Lisa snapped at Tabatha.

“I don’t need to,” Tabatha replied haughtily. “It will stay in place so long as there’s energy to feed it. Your mind power inside it will probably keep it going for thousands of years. Do you have to keep concentrating on your output?”

“Okay,” Ember said, sighed with some trepidation. “We have a power source. Any idea how to utilize it? Or get it inside the ship?”

“It was your idea to put it outside,” Lisa reminded the engineering officer.

“That was for a test,” Ember replied, getting a little testy. “I didn’t know you two were creating something that would last a thousand years.”

“Neither did we,” Tabatha said, equally defensive. “This is our first time experimenting with our powers like this!”

“I think we could dreamwalk it inside,” Lisa suggested. “Especially if Tabby here encloses the sphere with a time-shield so we can handle it.”

“Good idea,” Tabatha agreed, then smiled wickedly at Lisa. “It’s a good thing I like you – I hate being called ‘Tabby Here’…”

“Sorry,” Lisa replied. “That’s a hold-over from my nasty days…”

“I have to sleep to dreamwalk,” Tabatha said, returning to the task at hand.

“I don’t,” Lisa replied. “You make the time shield; I’ll move it inside.”

Both girls concentrated on the little ball of pure energy outside the hull of the resin ship. Lisa suddenly noticed that the ball had ceased to generate heat or light.

“What happened?” she asked anyone who could hear her.

“I put a time shield around it,” Tabatha replied. “Hurry up! It’s starting to get super-hot in there!”

“Hey, Doc,” Lisa asked Ember as the sphere floated through the hull of the ship. “Where d’ya want this thing?”

The Engineering Section was suddenly bathed in gleaming white light as the time-shield was released.

In the next hour or so, the Engineering crew (all six of them, with Lisa and Tabatha) had the sphere contained and inline with the dormant engine. As soon as the electrician hooked it up, it would be ready to test. Later, a circulation system would be designed around the sphere so that it would also help to heat the ship, since it wouldn’t always be this close to the sun. The two girls took a break.

“The food here is incredible,” Tabatha was saying as they floated along a passageway toward the mess hall.

“That’s great,” Lisa replied, “because I’m starving.”

They were each on their second plateful when Tabatha started playing ‘Macario’. At least, that’s how Lisa thought of it…

“So… How come you’re having trouble with energy drains now?” Tabatha wanted to know. “You haven’t had any problems like that since you were a little kid, have you?”

“What do you mean?” asked Lisa, knowing exactly what Tabby was talking about.

“Well, I couldn’t help but notice,” Tabatha replied, smiling at her friend, “that you pulled a real energy-drainer last night. Half the city felt it – at least us girls did. But you were able to blow a mile-wide hole clear across the San Luis Valley to cut off the Confederate advance without breaking a sweat.

Lisa smiled at her pesky companion, but before she could reply, the ship’s speakers blared out a shrill whistle. Then the bridge commander spoke.

“Secure quarters and prepare to launch! Launch time in one minute and counting!”

“What about my food?” Tabatha asked, anxious to keep her half-finished plateful of the best mush she’d had in several months.

“Let’s take it planetside,” Lisa suggested.

Both girls and their servings of food disappeared. A few seconds later, they reappeared in Engineering, their hands empty.

“Room for two more?” Lisa quipped.

“Sure,” Ember replied and sent them an image of a buffer bench built into the rear bulkhead and the mechanism that releases it.

Both girls quickly found it and secured themselves.

“Launch in five, four, three, two, one…”

Lisa and Tabatha, along with everyone else, were suddenly pressed back against their buffer pads. The ship was accelerating at maximum speed – six gees. After several minutes of the intense acceleration, the gee-force was reduced. The buffer they had been lying on retracted as they got up. The wall that had been the rear bulkhead was now the floor.

“We have gravity!” Tabatha exclaimed.

“Wow! No shit!” Lisa echoed.

“Ladies and gentlemen, passengers and crew – We have escaped earth orbit and are now in free orbit around the sun! Our speed is one hundred, seventy thousand kph and accelerating! We did it! Congratulations to you all!”

There was cheering all over the ship. The Phoenix III was, after twenty-six years of trial and error, taking its first interplanetary test flight. The electro-magnetic space drive, with Lisa and Tabatha’s new power source, was finally a success.